Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Texas State University Breaks Ground on Media Building

  • By Matt Jones
  • 08/23/21

Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, broke ground last week on a new media building. Live Oak Hall will serve students and faculty from the College of Fine Arts and Communication and feature amenities like a film soundstage, a TV studio, a recording mix classroom, an editing lab, a foley room for sound effects, and administrative offices and classrooms. The facility comes with an estimated cost of $10 million and is scheduled to open its doors in time for the fall 2022 semester.

University officials said that the new building comes as the Department of Theater and Dance continues to grow; theatre enrollment has grown by 53% across the last five years, and the university’s film concentration is also picking up steam. Live Oak Hall will also provide students from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication with their own television studio for the first time. Its media lab and classroom space will facilitate television news courses, and the new studio and control room will play home to the “Bobcat Update,” the university newscast.

Other amenities include greenscreen technology for the soundstage and television studio; a sound recording classroom with surround-sound capabilities and an isolation sound recording booth; and broadband fiber for live broadcast streaming capabilities. Students will also use the studio to produce sports and interview programs.

“San Marcos is situated between Austin and San Antonio, two cities with vibrant independent film communities where film graduates are in demand,” said the university in a news release. “With the advent of digital streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Hulu, the global demand for graduates with both creative and technical skills will continue to rise, and Texas State is uniquely situated to create a program that feeds both the curricular demand of students and the industry that will hire them.”

The 10,291-square-foot facility was designed by project architects the Lawrence Group, which has offices in Austin and New York and specializes in higher education and media/broadcast studios.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Phoenix School District Breaks Ground on New Prep Academy

    The Creighton Elementary School District near Phoenix, Ariz., recently broke ground on a campus replacement for Biltmore Preparatory Academy, according to a news release. The new space will allow the school to expand its enrollment by 50 percent for K–8 students and accommodate modern, collaborative learning styles.

  • Virginia Tech Tops Out New College of Engineering Building

    Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., recently celebrated the topping out of Mitchell Hall, which will soon stand as the largest College of Engineering building on campus, according to a news release. The university partnered with Skanska on the 285,500-square-foot facility, which has an expected completion date of winter 2028.

  • University of Kentucky Reopens Scovell Hall

    The University of Kentucky recently reopened Scovell Hall, part of the Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment (CAFE), following comprehensive renovations to the 120-year-old facility in Lexington, Ky., according to a news release.

  • Tennessee Middle School Completes Health, Life Safety Renovations

    The Giles County Board of Education in Pulaski, Tenn., recently announced that a series of renovation projects has been completed at Bridgeforth Middle School, according to a news release. The district partnered with Wold Architects & Engineers and Brindley Construction to modernize building systems at one of the district’s oldest schools.